Although a superior court judge ruled earlier this month that opponents of the school uniform policy in Bayonne missed their deadline to have their case heard in court, a letter issued from M. Kathleen Duncan, director of the Bureau of Controversies and Disputes for the State Department of Education, said the court was wrong.

In a letter to the Board of Education as well as other interested parties, Duncan said a review of the court proceedings as well as the circumstances leading up to filing of the suit, said the court may have erred in dismissing the case on technical grounds, claiming that actions by the Board of Education after approving the uniform policy in June seemed to justify an extension of the deadline, and may allow opponents to seek a ruling on the merits of the policy in Bayonne.

In a 14-page decision released in early November, Administrative Law Judge Mumtaz Bari-Brown said objectors filing the suit failed to meet the 90-day requirement to file a complaint. The group of parents filed their suit on Oct. 10, -- well over 100 days after the Board of Education voted on June 19 to implement the policy.

Laurie Coles, who has become one of the biggest critics of the school uniform policy, said the court decision was flawed because it did not take into account changes in the policy that were implemented after the board passed the policy in June.

"For one thing, the school board was not yet certain of what punishment they would give students if the policy was violated," Coles said.

Initially, the proposed punishment would have been to exclude students from extracurricular activities for failing to wear uniforms. Not until sometime in mid-summer did school officials impose a penalty of suspension for each violation.

This will allow the attorney for the opponents, Hackensack attorney Karin R. White Morgen to seek a ruling on the case, rather than seeking an appeal to higher court as was previously opposed.

"That would have cost us a lot more money," Coles said. "The commission (of the New Jersey Department of Education) seems to understand that we could not file suit until we understood what punitive measures the school would take against the kids for not wearing the uniform."

White, Coles said, intends to resubmit previous arguments, but will also likely add information to the case, such as additional changes to the policy and some enforcement issues that she and other parents believe are excessive. Coles said several students have been punished for wearing a protest button that the group designed, in what she believes is violation of free speech rights.

The buttons use a photographer of "Hitler's Youth Movement" from the 1930s, and has been ruled objectionable by school authorities and a violation of the dress and uniform codes for the school district.

"You can't tell that the photo is of Hitler's Youth," Coles said. "If you look at it, it looks like a photograph of Boy Scouts. But we wanted to make a point about history of uniforms."

Coles believes that students have a right to protest because of a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision that said students wearing black arm bands to protest the Vietnam War had their rights violated when school authorities prohibited the arm bands.

Included in the legal arguments will be objections to school district policy requiring students to be in uniform while posing for school pictures.

"Parents pay for the pictures, we should have a say as to what our children wear when posing for them," Coles said. "These are not photos being used for any school purpose, yet the schools are requiring our children to wear uniforms in them."

The case will also cite inconsistencies in enforcement of the uniform policies, such as the schedule for detention that seems to vary from student to student and school to school.

Coles and others in the coalition of parents also have some problems with a change of policy set for the 2007-2008 school year that would require students to wear uniform sweaters or other over garments if they are cold during school hours. The policy was passed on Oct. 31, despite a request by Coles and other parents to be present for the vote.

"They passed this on Halloween night when most of us decided to be with our kids," Coles said. "We asked the Board to delay the vote for the next meeting so that we could have our say. They voted anyway."

Two parents did speak at the board meeting, and Board Member Nina Dobkin opposed the change saying that she felt the board should not interfere with students' outwear.

Starting a political movement

Failing to win sympathy for their cause among most Board of Education members, Coles and some of the other parents are seeking a political answer.

Secaucus Board of Education Member Thomas Troyer - a one time political activist in Union City - will speak before the parents group next month to outline the methods for changing Bayonne current appointed board to an elected board.

Troyer as part of Project 70 was influential in starting the elected board process in Union City as well as other parts of the state.

Troyer - who is part of elected board in Secaucus - said this is the only direct way to hold Board of Education members accountable to the public, although he also said such a move subjects the board to political forces an appointed board generally avoids.

Troyer, who led the uniform committee in Secaucus, said Bayonne, Secaucus and other cities in Hudson County, seem to be suffering many of the same problems in developing a uniform policy.

"It is almost as if someone came up with a template as to how to get uniforms in the schools without doing it fairly," he said.

He said in Union City, Secaucus and Bayonne, parents were asked to purchase uniform packages from a single vendor, prohibited from purchasing individual pieces or from non approved vendors, and in several cases, school districts were looking to give the contract to one vendor without bid or requests for proposals.

School officials in Union City and Bayonne said no bid was necessary because taxpayer money was not being expended, this despite the fact that students would be punished in parents did not make the purchase.

Troyer noted that throughout Hudson County one vendor, Uniformity, seemed to be the primary beneficiary, and something he as the head of the Uniform Committee in Secaucus has tried to prevent.

Although Bayonne School District also sought appoint Uniformity without a bid, school officials eventually put out requests for proposals, then awarded Uniformity as the sole vendor.

After nearly 3,000 uniform packages were purchased from Uniformity, the Bayonne Board of Education agreed to allow Herbert's Uniform Store to serve as an alternative official source.

While Troyer said Secaucus eventually allowed parents to purchase from several vendors, he said Union City and other districts do not.

Troyer also said that Secaucus like Bayonne tried to use a vague preliminary survey on uniforms as a mandate for approving the uniforms

"Nobody really knows how many people actually voted for the uniforms since each student brought a form home," he said. "This means parents with more than one child could have voted more than once to pursue the uniform policy."

Coles and others said the Bayonne school district used a similar tactic, sending home with students a form that asked if parents might be interested in uniforms, then with the results of this vague survey pushed through a uniform policy.

"We don't want people stuck with only one choice," he said. "But I've felt pressure on the school board to name only one vendor: Uniformity."

Troyer, a former teacher in the Union City school district where Uniformity is the sole vendor, said parents in Union City had many of the same complaints there as well such as rude sales people, lack of supply, ill-fitting and poor quality materials, and lack of choice.

But this has still resulted in counterfeit uniform sales in both Bayonne and Union City.

A Union City parent, who wished not to be named, said she went to a counterfeit company because she could not tolerate the long lines at the Uniformity store in Union City.

Troyer said some parents in Secaucus have gone to the same counterfeit uniform place in Union City to get uniforms for Secaucus schools.

In Bayonne, an alternative vendor was ordered to stop issuing uniforms.

Coles said her child does not wear the official uniform, but clothing of the same colors of navy blue and Kaki.

"That seems to be enough to satisfy the authorities in that school," Coles said.